I manage several WordPress websites, and I do so using my iPad, which is my primary computer. A little while ago I was debugging a bit of HTML in the WordPress editor, as it wasn’t rendering as expected. I went over every line carefully but could not locate the error. It was starting to get under my skin, and then I stumbled across my mistake: I had turned on Smart Punctuation in the keyboard settings for my iPad. All I had to do was open the Settings app, go to General > Keyboard > Smart Punctuation and toggle that feature off. I frequently turn on Smart Punctuation for other things, but now I know that I have to turn it off when coding for the web.

So, if you find yourself coding on iPad and can’t figure out why your seemingly valid code isn’t giving you the intended result, check your Smart Punctuation setting.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to create a shortcut to toggle this setting on and off so that I don’t have to do it manually every time. The next-best thing is a shortcut created by Federico Viticci that allows you to jump straight to various locations within the Settings app. You can download the shortcut on this page; just search for Open Settings to find the right shortcut.